Where do I even start?
The monsters are among my very favorite designs in the whole jam. I'm not usually big on outright horror, but I absolutely love a fantastical, otherworldly monster, and these monsters are exactly the surreal sweet spot for me! (Spooky Long Neck Friend, are you by chance cousins with The Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth...? ✨) I was equally horrified and delighted every time one appeared on screen, and could never land on whether I more dreaded or looked forward to their rare and impactful appearances!
The backgrounds are invitingly warm and organic; I enjoyed the hand-drawn and painterly qualities in each of them, as they add a distinct sense of the personal to each separate setting. The music during tense moments really adds heft to the darker turns of the story, and the phenomenal sound design further fills out the game's remarkable sense for building atmosphere and dread.
Both character art design and narrative direction are superb: the sprite expressions are dynamic and emotive, and moreover, each of the characters feel lived-in and flawed. This sparkles perhaps the most in the protagonist Anita: her deep anxiety and heavily-etched trauma add a layer of additional alarm and discomfort--as someone with an anxiety disorder and trauma, I relate to her; as a player, I desperately want to protect her; and all the same, given the heavy and ongoing influence of her trauma and self-doubt, I also cannot help questioning how reliable a narrator she is. It's a fantastic set up for a game of existential horror, and still never ever undermines Anita as a character or a person who harbors genuine compassion and kindness. Nothing is a clean good-evil-black-white binary here, and in a story with such high stakes, that is a thrilling choice indeed. 💞